NerdWallet.com Ranks Town of Wellesley Third on List of Most Educated Places in the Country

Personal finance website NerdWallet.com recently named the Town of Wellesley among "The Most Educated Places in America." Wellesley ranked third behind Bethesda, Maryland, and Palo Alto, California. NerdWallet, and several media outlets covering the list including Forbes and BostInno.com, name Wellesley College in their discussion of the ranking.

Wellesley was originally known as West Needham. The town took the name Wellesley in 1881, six years after the founding of Wellesley College. Needham was also included in the list's Top 10 (number 6), along with Brookline (4) and Newton (10).

 Towns named on the list have "a broad base of educated people, as opposed to the highest concentration of Ph.D.s." The ranking looked at areas with the highest proportion of the adult population with high school, college or graduate degrees. "Incredibly," NerdWallet.com writes, "80.3% of [Wellesley's] population has a bachelor’s degree or graduate degree."